Spider Woman's Daughter (19 page)

“I love the way the architecture blends into the landscape,” Bernie said. “I wonder what brought the people here?”

Chee walked ahead to open the truck. “They came on foot, honey. The pickup hadn’t been invented yet.”

They didn’t have time for more hiking, but they explored the paved loop trail with views of the remains of more massive ruins of a culture that rose and fell over the course of three centuries. Then they headed out of the park, driving past the Fajada Butte overlook and the junction for the Wijiji ruins. Bernie said, “Seeing this place makes me more curious about the pottery that came from here, the things the lieutenant was working on. And about Ellie.”

Chee slowed as they left the pavement for the dirt road. “Interesting that the ranger said Ellie planned to come back to visit.”

“That’s probably why she had Pueblo Alto on her calendar,” Bernie said. “Maybe she decided to shoot the lieutenant and go into hiding first.”

“We’ll ask her when we find her. Or when the feds bring her in.”

Bernie said, “She sounds like a cool character. Focused on her job. I guess spending all that time with old pots would tend to make you, well, detached.”

“Or not liking people much in the first place gives you the perfect personality for that.”

“Sounds like Dr. Davis, too. Maybe pot people are all introverts.”

They bounced along in silence for a while. The washboards they encountered on the way out had a pattern that denied the truck a comfortable ride at any speed. Fast or slow, the road threatened to shake the bolts loose. Bernie saw a lean coyote, its tan coat the same color as the sandy earth, a contrast to the gray of the sage. She watched a trio of turkey vultures soar against the vivid blue sky. No clouds yet.

Chee said, “Davis lied about not remembering me. I could tell by the way she looked at me that she knew who I was. I thought she seemed familiar. But when I met her she had long, curly red hair.”

“When did you meet her?”

“Years ago. It was here at Chaco, working the missing Ellie case with the lieutenant. We interviewed her as part of the investigation. Most folks don’t have that many encounters with the police. They remember them.”

“Maybe she’s trying to forget that whole phase of her life,” Bernie said.

“Maybe. But she and Ellie lived in employee housing. It seems odd that she wouldn’t have recognized EFB either.”

“She might not have known what Ellie called her business,” Bernie said. “You saw her check the database.”

Bernie noticed a car approaching them, bouncing along the washboard barely under control. “You know, the other thing that’s wrong here is this Leonard Nez. Jackson being so closemouthed about him and about what they were doing that day, if they didn’t shoot the lieutenant. The Nez guy must have some pull with Jackson, holding something over him, threatening him.”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “I don’t buy the story of an unnamed uncle who lives down a road Zuni way. Whatever it is, it’s big enough that Jackson was willing to spend a night in jail rather than share it.”

Chee pulled out to pass a king cab truck hauling a camping trailer, moving away from the cloud of dust it generated and into the clear air. “You know the ranch where Jackson said he works?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Bernie said. “The Jacobs family has been out there for generations.”

“I think the number Jackson gave you is the same number Ellie jotted down on her desk pad next to ‘SJ,’ ” he said. “I remembered the Colorado area code.”

Bernie checked her notes from the visit to EFB and took out her cell phone. When she finally had reception, she called. No answer, but the recording told her she’d reached the Double X Ranch.

“You were right,” she said. “That ties Ellie and Jackson and the car.”

She opened the glove box, extracted a map, and spread it across her lap.

“I think I’ve got this down,” Chee said. “I stay on the highway until we reach Farmington. Or until I pull over for you to drive. Correct me if I’m wrong. But I guess I don’t even need to say that anymore, do I, sweetheart?”

She punched him in the arm. Not hard, but hard enough.

“I’m looking for the shortest way to get from Shiprock to the Double X Ranch,” she said.

“You could use the GPS in your phone.”

“Right,” Bernie said. “I love the way that computer voice twists up Navajo place names. Can I use the truck?”

“Sorry. While you’re finding SJ this afternoon, I’ve got to get to Window Rock. I wonder what new torture Largo has dreamed up for me?”

15

W
hile Chee showered, Bernie called the Double X Ranch again. Owner/manager Slim Jacobs answered, and she identified herself as a Navajo cop. Yes, he said, he’d talk to her about EFB, even though his ranch was not on Navajo land, and, he said, he didn’t think she had any jurisdiction. And yes, he knew Jackson Benally. It was a slow day. Come on over. He gave her better directions than she’d been able to get from the map.

Bernie made a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and a pot of coffee and got out her traveling cup.

Chee looked at the counter. “So you’re outa here?”

She noticed that he smelled like soap and sunshine. “If Slim Jacobs can help us track down Ellie, that’s well worth the trip. I can finish the appraisal work and you can follow up with her, find out about that meeting she set up with the lieutenant,” she said. “And who knows, maybe Slim can tell us something about Lizard Nez, too.”

“Why didn’t you just ask him about Nez over the phone?” Chee said.

“He doesn’t know me, and he sounded prickly. Face-to-face is better. By the way, Largo called while you were cleaning up. Mrs. Benally is waiting for you. She has info about Nez, but she’ll only talk to you.”

“I was right about torture.”

Bernie poured coffee into her travel cup and handed it to him along with a sandwich. “I couldn’t find your mug. Take this.”

He kissed her. “What about you?”

“I’ll drink my coffee here, take a Coke along instead.”

“See you tonight,” he said. “Don’t forget to call Darleen.”

The drive to the Double X Ranch took her an hour. Usually driving relaxed her, but not today. Odd, she thought. Alone in the Toyota, she remembered the percussion of the gunshot and the startled look on Leaphorn’s face as he slipped to the ground. The roar of the sedan speeding off. The warm blood growing sticky on her hands. The dark eyes staring blankly from a face growing paler. The smell of the hot asphalt. The wail of the ambulance.

She lifted a hand from the steering wheel to wipe away the tears. Pay attention to the traffic, she told herself. You have a job to finish. You don’t have anything to cry about.

She passed the sign that marked the boundary of the Navajo Reservation. Sleeping Ute Mountain, a special place to the Ute bands, rose to the northwest. To some, the bulky blue shape resembled a reclining man in a feather headdress; others saw a busty woman. The Ute Mountain Casino sat in its shadow, complete with blinking lights, neon signs, and a packed parking lot.

Someone had marked the turnoff to the Double X with an old tire hung on a fence post. She left the pavement of US 491, clumped over a cattle guard and onto the dirt. A horse picked through the scant vegetation. From the bony looks of it, a feral pony. Picturesque, the tourists called them. A nuisance for ranchers. She tapped the brakes as a lean brown dog trotted in front of her car, moving right to left. It stopped on the top of an earthen berm to watch her bounce past.

Double X Ranch was a first-rate operation with a reputation for respecting the land and treating workers well. Lots of room out here, Bernie thought. A maze of shallow arroyos, dirt tracks heading out into the mesas, stone outcroppings. Colorado plateau country, where coyotes and ravens ruled. It reminded her of the landscape that had been part of a huge manhunt for fugitives who robbed a casino years ago. Despite the best efforts of combined law enforcement, those bad guys evaporated into the dry landscape.

After about a mile, she noticed a line of pickup trucks and battered sedans—classic rez cars—parked along the road. She drove past them to encounter a backhoe partly obstructing the way around the next curve.

“I’ll be working on and off all day,” the driver said. “Best to leave your car back there so you don’t get blocked in.”

She made a U-turn, parked at the head of the line facing toward the blacktop, and walked toward the ranch house with the low growl of the backhoe’s engine as background music. Most of the vehicles had their windows open, keys in the ignition, as Jackson had said.

A shaggy, oversize dog barked at her from the shade of the porch. It rose stiffly and didn’t bother to move closer. The front door stood ajar, but the screen was shut.

“Hello in there,” she called. The dog kept barking. “I’m here to see Mr. Jacobs.”

The screen door opened, and a paunchy man in a gray checked shirt and jeans stepped onto the porch. “Princess, enough. Quiet down now.” The dog hushed, keeping an eye on Bernie. “Just doing her job,” the man said.

He smiled, a flash of crooked teeth. “Come on in. I’m Slim Jacobs. You must be Officer Manuelito.”

“That’s me,” Bernie said. She wiped the soles of her Nikes on the doormat, which read “Howdy Pardner.”

“Can I get you some water, Officer? I might have a soda somewheres.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “Water would be great. Call me Bernie.”

“Call me Slim,” he said. “Or whatever you want. Just don’t call me late for supper.” He motioned her to a seat at a large wooden table covered with piles of bills, catalogs, correspondence. She saw a well-used Stetson on the hat rack.

“I heard about the old policeman who got shot in Window Rock,” he said. “Terrible thing. Any idea who did it?”

“We’re working on it,” Bernie said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you about Ms. Friedman. She had an appointment with the policeman before he was shot. I’ve been looking for her to talk about that, and an old appraisal she did.”

“I’m afraid you drove all the way out here for nothing, missy,” he said. “I never got to see Ms. Friedman last week. That Ellie stood me up. No call to say she wasn’t comin’. No call afterwards to explain about it. Of course, she always was a little scatterbrained. I tried callin’ her to reschedule and tell her now she owed me a lunch. Left messages. Never heard back.”

“It’s odd,” Bernie said.

“Especially for someone startin’ up a business again. She came right out the first time I called, a couple weeks ago. She seemed real interested in the work, so we set the date. I got everything ready, even fixed us some lunch.”

“I’m working for a museum in Santa Fe,” Bernie said. “I’d like to track her down so I can finish an assignment. Sounds like you know her pretty well.”

Slim grinned. “Oh, we had a thing goin’ back when she worked at Chaco, before that jerk tried to kill her and she started teaching at ASU. She told me she got laid off there and decided to come back to New Mexico. Cooler here. Nice gal.”

He stopped and seemed to be waiting for a question.

“How did you meet her?”

Slim said, “I hired her on to do an appraisal back when she was still wet behind the ears. I saw her little card on the bulletin board at the Laundromat in Cuba. She was just appraising part-time then, squeezin’ in some evaluations along with studying old pots for her research. And I was workin’ on a ranch near Cuba, takin’ a break from this place and my old man.”

Princess whined at the door, and Slim rose to let her in. She walked over to Bernie. When Bernie ignored her, the dog sauntered to Slim and put her head in his lap. He rubbed her ears absentmindedly as he spoke.

“I had some things I’d collected, mostly from guys who worked on the ranch and needed a few bucks for gas money. I wondered if any of the pots were worth a nickel. Coulda used the cash. She came out, we had a beer or two, got to talkin’, hit it off. Besides whatever she did at Chaco, she told me she was gettin’ her appraisal business started, workin’ with a pardner. She landed a job to put the values on a big collection of Anasazi stuff headed off to Japland. Guess they call those old pots something else now, not Anasazi.”

Slim stopped. “You part Pueblo?”

“No,” Bernie said. “Navajo on all sides as far back as anyone remembers.”

“Since Ellie lived in the employee housing there in the Chaco park, we used to meet up in Cuba. She had a storage locker out that way for some furniture, a bunch of books, boxes of potshards for her research, stuff like that. She had room in there to make pots, and she set up a little desk and files to do her paperwork for the business.

“Anyways, we’d dance at the bar, get a bottle of Cold Duck or Blue Nun, maybe a joint, and go back to the locker for some private time. We’d see the trailers and RVs and boats stored there and pretend we was on our way someplace exotic. We’d get to laughin’ at those old silver Airstreams. Suppositories on wheels.”

He paused. “That was more than you needed to know, right?”

Bernie sipped the cold water and glanced at the clutter of bachelordom intermixed with some Indian baskets, rocks, books, yellowed receipts, a few small but nice Navajo rugs. She waited for more of the story to unfold.

“Anyways,” Slim said, “that Jap deal was the only time I saw her get riled up, seriously rubbed the wrong way.”

“Why?” Bernie asked. “It seems that she would have appreciated the work because she was new in the business.”

He chuckled. “I asked her that very thing. The guy wanted the values because he was sellin’ the whole kit and caboodle to some rich Tokyo joker. I told her, ‘Hell, Ellie, there’s thousands of old pots around here. What do you care?’ Lordy, I can still see her standin’ there. She let me have it.”

Slim pitched his voice a little higher. “ ‘America’s patrimony!’ ‘Leaving forever!’ ‘Irreplaceable.’ ‘Unconscionable!’ She would have bought those old pots herself just to keep ’em here if she’d had the moola.”

He leaned away from the table, balancing the chair on its two back legs, causing Princess to wander off. Signaling, it seemed to Bernie, the end of his diatribe.

“It sounds like she knew quite a bit about Chaco Canyon pottery,” Bernie said.

“It was her favorite thing in the whole wide world. She was especially partial to pottery that the Indians who lived right in the canyon made. She liked that better than what came in through trade or however else from other Indians or from the outliers on those big wide roads. You know about all that?”

“A little,” Bernie said. “It’s interesting to think of those roads, wide enough for a truck to drive on. I wonder why the old ones took the time and put in the effort to build them.”

“Ellie and I talked about all that. I always figured folks came to Chaco to party, visit their kinfolks, maybe try to hook up with a wife. Pray a little, trade a little, then head on back home.”

He stopped, grinned at her. “You’re a pretty girl. Married?”

“Yes,” she said. “You started telling me about Ellie not showing up for the appraisal last week.”

“Not much else to say about that.” Slim stopped talking. Readjusted his chair. Sipped his drink.

“That collection you mentioned, the one going to Japan. That might be the appraisal I need to ask her about,” Bernie said. “Some pots she evaluated are coming to a museum in Santa Fe.”

“Home again? That will make her happy. Ellie especially liked those tall pots. Cylinders, she called them, and they looked like that, too. She talked about them a lot, how rare they were. How pretty. She showed me a photo of one. It was kinda nice, I guess, but I just figured it was another skinny old pot.”

He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Hold on a minute, missy. I’ll be right back.”

Princess looked after him, then crept beneath the table and put her chin on Bernie’s knee. Bernie wasn’t used to dogs in the house, but she gave her a few pats.

Slim returned with a photo. “I found this again last week. Jackson and I were goin’ through stuff, gettin’ ready for the appraisal when she didn’t show up. This is the kind of pot she loves.”

He handed Bernie a photo, probably taken twenty years ago. “Ellie’s the gal with the pot.”

A young woman, pale with light hair, held a cylindrical jar in front of her. Bernie noticed a triangle pattern that reminded her of the lieutenant’s sketch. A second woman stood next to Ellie. She looked vaguely familiar.

Slim sat back down. “I’m kinda glad to hear you haven’t had any luck finding Ellie. I thought she might be avoiding me.”

“Do you have time for a couple more questions?”

“Ask away,” Slim said. “I’ve got all day.”

“Did Ellie mention going out of town, taking a trip to visit friends, anything like that?”

“No, ma’am. She sounded eager to do the job and kinda glad to come see me again, too.”

“Did she ever talk about a man named Joe Leaphorn to you?”

“Not that I can remember, but I can’t remember as good as I used to.”

Bernie said, “You mention that you knew Jackson Benally. Have you ever had a problem with him?”

Slim hesitated. “Jack? He’s a good man. Kinda young for his age because Mama won’t let him sow any wild oats.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been around the block a time or two, missy. I can see where this is leading. Don’t you be thinkin’ that Jackson shot that policeman. He doesn’t even like to kill rattlesnakes that get in the way of building a fence. Why did you ask me ’bout him?”

“Jackson’s car may have been involved. He disappeared right after the shooting, and he lied to the investigator about being in class. He said he was with a friend, but the guy he says was with him is missing still.”

“Friend? Who’s that?”

“A young man named Leonard Nez,” Bernie said.